Norton 360 v4.0 Premiere

[Demon Cleaner]

I wanted to get an original internet security program again, so I checked out some of the recent companies releases. I didn't want to get G-Data or Kaspersky anymore, didn't have the best experiences with them.

In the very beginning I always used software from Norton, and never had any problems with it, despite people sometimes complaining.

I now saw that the newest Norton software got only good reviews so far, and I thought myself why not getting it again, after owning the 2002 version.

The Premiere version also comes with the ability to back up your stuff online, and gives you 25GB of webspace.

I would get the whole package for about 60£, though subscription only being for 1 year. But that would be for 3 PCs (exactly what I would need).

So what do you think, would it be an opportunity to eventually buy one again?

[Harrison]

The Norton 2010 suite had been getting good reviews, and they are saying the hooror stories of past versions are now a thing of the past and it is now a good product worth buying.

However, I would still avoid Norton because of the huge footprint it installs into the PC and the amount of resources it uses when running. Not nice. I still like Kaspersky the most and use it, but you said you don't like that due to a bad experience... so maybe if you do want a commercial security suite you could try it again.

[Demon Cleaner]

Kaspersky was annoying me too much with messages popping up all the time, like 3 in one minute. Perhaps it was configured to be too secure, didn't alter a lot after the install. I have to say that I didn't really go through the settings, as I didn't know what to switch on or off to keep it still secure enough. Otherwise it ran just fine, I cannot complain. Norton just ran smoother, I didn't even notice the slowdowns due to using too many resources everybody seemed to have.

---------- Post added at 15:32 ---------- Previous post was at 14:04 ----------

I saw that the BitDefender Internet Security Software also gets good reviews on every site, even slightly better than Kaspersky or Norton.

[Submeg]

I don't know why people have complained so much about Norton, I've been using it since I connected to the net in the late 90s and I really haven't noticed any slow downs? When my PC starts getting really slow, I just do a format and start again. Not the quickest way to solve slowdowns, but it does work.

[outlawal2]

As a PC support guy both hardware and software, I can tell you why people steer clear of Norton... I cannot tell you how many machines I have had to rebuild due to Norton "Activation" issues... They have the worst activation and subscription service I have ever dealt with. More often than not even Norton themselves cannot fix the subscription problems and cannot even uninstall their own software. Reminds me of AOL many years back that would take over the system and had no way to remove. (They later got their asses sued off due to these types of issues and I think Norton should as well.) Norton often requires a complete machine rebuild to fix the issue and in todays' world that is just unacceptable. I belive Harrison said that the new version supposedly fixes these issues and I certanly hope so... But for my money I will not take a chance on their shoddy software when there are so many alternative options out there...

Just my opinion... Good luck with whatever choice you make..

[Demon Cleaner]

Just my opinion... Good luck with whatever choice you make..

Would you than suggest something in particular? F. ex. sticking with free software, like Avast and Comodo Firewall (which I use atm)?

I read that Norton still has problems when you try to remove the software, and I had these problems back then too, but I found a Norton removal tool, which did the job quite good.

[outlawal2]

BitDefender receives consistent good marks and I have had many customers that swear by it... If I were in the market I would try Bit Defender...

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, I will investigate that further tomorrow.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, I installed the trial version of Norton 360 v4 to make a test. Today, 2 days later, I'm already removing it because I have some issues. I cannot run "Live Update", I always get the message that I can't connect to the Symantec server. First I thought that would be a problem of my laptop, not making the connection correctly, but it wasn't. This seems to be a more common problem. Searched for support on the Symantec site, found several help to fix this problem, tried all of them, none of course worked. As the problem still remained unsolved, I decided to get rid of it.

Testing BitDefender next I think.

---------- Post added at 13:59 ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 ----------

Installed BitDefender Total Security now, seems to work, gonna wait some days before giving my final opinion. I also found a nice patch for BD, applied it, and it gives me free usage until 2047!! Nice!! It also seems to work, I updated, nothing changed.

[Demon Cleaner]

It seems that with BitDefender I have exactly the same problem with the databases update than with Norton, so that was eventually not Norton's fault, but I'm quite sure now that it could have something to do with my laptop. Don't know what though, as I can connect to the internet perfectly, although only via 3G, but that was always enough so far.

EDIT: Found out what the problem was. Avast and Comodo were still installed, although not active and not started with Windows, they were disabled. After now removing them, the update just went fine. Perhaps something of these programs still was running silently in the background.

Now I feel bad about having removed Norton, as that must have been the same problem